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A brain damaged girl is being infused with her older sister’s umbilical cord blood in a cutting-edge treatment it is hoped may help her recover.

Samantha Szura, who is five, was found face-down in a swimming pool as a toddler. She barely survived and her brain suffered life-altering damage, but a new treatment is being implemented which it is hoped could dramatically improve her quality of life.

Eleven years ago, Samantha’s parents, Carrie and Steven, made the decision to store their first child’s umbilical cord blood, which now being infused into Samantha because it has shown to help brain injuries recover.

Samantha Szura, 5, receives umbilical blood stored from her sister’s birth in attempts to treat the brain injuries she sustained in a near drowning accident (Picture: WRAL)

After the near drowning incident, Samantha was in a coma in a Michigan hospital for a week with a dangerously weak heartbeat, her mother said.

The Szuras discovered a potentially breakthrough treatment that uses cord blood to help form new nerve connections in the brain – and luckily they had a supply of the blood that they saved when their first child, Allison was born.

The umbilical cord blood is said to held the brain make new connections in nerve fibers, according to doctors (Picture: WRAL)

Samantha became part of a cord blood study at Duke University. The study does not focus on stem cells, instead looking into the effects of a seperate component of the blood.

‘It’s a different cell, called a “monocyte,” that is doing the work,’ Dr. Joanne Kurtzberg, of Dukes bone marrow transplant program, said.